


Amazed by the Love in You

by ceterisparibus



Series: Prompts! [1]
Category: Daredevil (TV)
Genre: Avocados at Law, F/M, Falling In Love, Hurt/Comfort, Idiots in Love, Mutual Pining, Tumblr Prompt, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-16
Updated: 2019-05-05
Packaged: 2020-01-15 01:53:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,508
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18488875
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceterisparibus/pseuds/ceterisparibus
Summary: Tumblr prompt: Hi! Are you still taking Karedevil prompts? I've been enjoying your "Ella" series a lot, but I'm in need of something less angsty :') Could you please us? THANKS!Matt and Karen realize the little things they love about each other. Dear Anon, I hope you like it!





	1. Please Believe You're Worth It

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Set shortly after the end of Season 3.

Karen

Working together again was more than she’d dared hope for but also more difficult than she’d expected. Foggy wasn’t the problem, of course. It was Matt. It was always Matt.

That was unfair. He was doing a great job being a normal human being. As much as was possible for him, anyway. He showed up to work on time, and even though he was in a pretty much constant state of injury (he really needed to get an armored suit), he endured Karen and Foggy showering him with ice packs and some weird anti-inflammatory cream that Foggy found on the internet with all the patience of a saint. So she honestly thought that they, as a team, were handling things pretty well.

And she loved the work itself. Being a private investigator required the perfect blend of truth-seeking and recklessness. She missed the Bulletin (she missed Ellison and she missed her press pass), but this was definitely what she was meant to be doing.

And these were the people she was meant to be doing it with.

She was smiling a little at that sappy thought when their brand-new office door opened. Matt stepped in, his face appearing slightly paler than usual under his red glasses glinting in the harsh office light, or maybe that was just the contrast with his black suit jacket. “Where’s Foggy?” he asked.

“Donut run,” Karen answered. “Wait, it’s Monday. So…scones?”

“Sounds right.” He set his cane in the corner and started towards his office, trailing one hand along the wall as he went.

“You don’t have to pretend anymore,” Karen reminded him, trying not to feel irritated.

“Yeah,” he said absently, disappearing into his office like a cat slinking into some dark space. Almost literally, because the light was off. Which…it wasn’t like he needed light, and Karen was all about saving a few bucks, so she didn’t point it out.

She wanted to ask if he was okay, though. Maybe he’d been stabbed. Maybe he'd been hit in the head last night. Maybe he’d broken something. Maybe he was bleeding internally and crawled to work just so he could spend his last few moments with—

She firmly cut off _that_ line of thought. There would be no dying declarations of love in this office.

That was the thing, though. The real problem with working with Matt wasn’t that Matt was bad at his job (he was great at it) or that Matt was keeping as many secrets as he used to (he still kept secrets, but he was obviously trying not to, and she could respect that). The problem was that he was distracting. And she couldn’t even call him out on it without revealing how easy she was to distract.

She knew the facts. Factually, it was obvious that both she and Matt were attracted to each other. Those dates and all that kissing had _definitely_ been mutual. And it was still mutual. The attraction, at least, since she had no reason to believe that he’d ever stopped being attracted to her and, thanks to his senses, he had every reason to believe she was still attracted to him.

Of course, she’d been the one to end things between them. But he knew why, right? It was because of all the lies. The secrets. And they…all right, maybe they weren’t _past_ all that, but they were absolutely working _through_ it.

So why couldn’t they try working through…other things?

Maybe he needed more time. Really, maybe _she_ needed more time. But it felt more like wasting time.

Whatever. She was a professional. She resolutely shifted her thoughts from Matt Murdock to her work and was actually falling into a groove of productivity when there was a loud _thud_ and muffled swearing from the room belonging to the subject of her previous thoughts.

She sprang to her feet. Dashing into Matt’s office, she flicked on the light to see him on the floor, chair tipped over beside him, pushing himself unsteadily upright.

“Matt?” She dropped down beside him but stopped herself from reaching for him. “What happened?”

“Nothing.” His glasses were on the floor, giving her full view of his eyes fluttering closed. “Tried to get up too fast. Got dizzy. M’fine.”

She blinked. “You…fainted?”

“ _No_ ,” he snapped, like fainting was an offensive thing to be accused of.

“Did you pass out? Don’t you dare lie to me,” she added, because she could practically see the denial on his parted lips.

He closed his mouth. Nodded once.

She rolled her eyes. “That’s literally the same thing as fainting.”

“Whatever,” he mumbled eloquently, drawing himself up and bracing a hand on his desk.

“Matt, wait, let me—”

Too late. He got to his feet and the blood instantly drained from his face. She darted forward, but he was too heavy to catch. Instead, she just kind of altered his trajectory so that he ended up slumped against the wall instead of face-planting.

“You’re welcome,” she muttered under her breath, before beginning a very professional pat-down of her coworker. Her hand came away wet when she touched his right side. The dim office light revealed blood glistening on her fingers.

Swearing quietly, she slid the jacket off his shoulders to reveal blood mottling his gray dress shirt. She returned to her original stab wound theory as she started tugging the shirt unceremoniously out of his pants.

And of course _that_ was the moment that he woke up. Jolting backwards from her touch, he thumped his head against the wall and…was he blushing?

Would’ve been adorable in other circumstances.

“Karen,” he stammered. “What’re you—”

“You’re bleeding,” she said crisply, too annoyed with him to tease him. Shoving the shirt out of the way, she glowered at a three-inch-long cut in his side. Bloody stitching had been torn from his skin. Ew. “Who did this?”

“This guy,” he breathed, closing his eyes. “Stalking some runaway kid on the streets.”

Her stomach flipped. “I hope you broke something painful.”

A hesitant grin flashed across his face. “That’s not what Foggy would say.”

“Yeah, well, I’m not Foggy. And that’s not what I was asking. Who did the stitching? Your mom?”

She doubted it. As far as Karen knew, Maggie’s stitching had never ripped out. Not once.

“Oh.” He shifted a little under her scrutiny. “That was me.”

She trailed her hand up his side just next to the cut, mostly ignoring the way his whole body tensed at her touch. “Yeah, I figured that’s why it looks so crappy.”

“Hey,” he protested. “S’not…s’not that bad.”

“You just _fainted. Twice_.”

“Passed out.”

“Right, much better.” Rolling her eyes, she put her hand over his pants pocket, feeling for the lump of his phone and privately enjoying the way he flinched again. Maybe she wasn’t entirely above teasing him. “Calm down, I’m just grabbing your phone.”

“Why—”

“I’m calling Sister Maggie.” She found Maggie’s contact not under _Sister Maggie_ or even _Maggie_ but _Mom_.

“Wait, no, I’m not—”

“Too late,” she said cheerily as Maggie answered. “Hi, Sister Maggie, it’s Karen. Are you busy? Your son just fainted in his office due to the worst stitching job I’ve ever seen. He’s fine now,” she added quickly, “but if you don’t come I’m dragging him to the hospital and I don’t think he can fight me without fainting again.”

Matt glared sightlessly over her shoulder.

Karen hung up. “She’s on her way, and you owe us both coffee. Think you can last until she gets here if you just sit there and look pretty?”

“Pretty,” he repeated, his broody expression replaced by a grin.

“Like a Victorian lady,” Karen explained mercilessly.

He rolled his eyes, but the cocky grin remained. Obviously. Because he might be stupid about a lot of things, but it must be kind of impossible for him to not be aware that she thought he was pretty.

She hesitated. “For the record, Matt…”

He raised his eyebrows.

“Thank you. For taking care of the kid.”

“She’s not taken care of. Not yet.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “She ran away from her foster family. I’ll look into it, see if I can figure out why. See if I can connect her to some other organization that might help. I don’t think she’s from Hell’s Kitchen, I don’t think she…I don’t think she really has anyone.”

See, Karen would’ve been impressed enough that he protected the little girl while she was on the streets. But this? She _loved_ this about him.

(She loved him.)

He tilted his head at her. “What?”

“Nothing.” She reached out to touch the unbroken skin beside the wound, but this time she did it slowly, and this time he held very still. She trailed her hand up over his chest, then brushed her fingers under his jaw. “I’m just thinking I should learn how to do stitches.”

He cleared his throat. “Uh…why?”

“It’s like I told you before.” Before so many, many things. “You’re worth keeping around.”

And to prove it, she leaned in to press a kiss briefly to his cheek.


	2. Inspire Me

Matt

“Hey, Karen,” Matt began, phone pressed to his ear, hunched over on his couch in his apartment. “I might need to take the day.”

“You all right?” Her voice was skeptical.

He wrinkled his nose at the scent of copper surrounding him. “Fine. Just working on something.”

“And…you can’t work on it at the office?”

He sighed, fully aware that she could hear it over the phone. “I got cut on my back and don’t want to bleed through any of my work shirts.”

“How bad?” she asked immediately.

“Not bad.” He realized belatedly that, coming from him, that might not be convincing.

“Did you ask your mom?”

He made a face at whatever happened to be in front of him. The question made him feel a little kid. Not that, as a kid, he’d even had a—all right, stop thinking that. “She’s busy,” he said. Not a lie—Maggie was always busy. But he also hadn’t asked. Hadn’t wanted to bother her needlessly. This cut wasn’t deep enough to be dangerous; it was just hard to get it to stop seeping blood when he couldn’t reach it.

“Well…” Karen sounded hesitant now. “I’ve actually been, um…practicing stitching, so maybe I could help.”

“Practicing stitching,” he repeated blankly.

He heard a faint rustling sound and imagined her tucking her hair behind her ear. “I signed up for this class and I’ve been practicing on gross slabs of meat. So if you wanted to come in at all today, or if you just wanted to be able to lie down without smearing blood on your couch, I could come over.”

Come over. She hadn’t been to his place since he’d moved back in, but he told himself not to get too excited. This wasn’t a big deal; she used to come over all the time. “Yeah.” He felt around on the couch for the bloody gauze he’d left strewn on the cushions, figuring he might as well clean things up a bit. “Come over…please.”

 

He had a good reason to answer the door not wearing a shirt. Two good reasons, actually. First: he knew with utter certainty that it was Karen and not anyone else at the door. Second: he didn’t want to stain any of his shirts. He also had two very good reasons to rethink all of this. First: her pulse still sped up whenever he got too close. Second: he wasn’t anywhere near over her.

He still remembered the feel of her lips on his cheek a few weeks ago, her raised temperature lighting up her body right in front of him on the floor of his office. But simply because she liked looking at him didn’t mean she was ready to rebuild what they’d lost. If that was even possible. Reminding himself that she was only here because he needed help, he opened the door.

She stood in silence for about ten seconds before giving a small cough. “Well, your other injury looks better.”

He automatically touched the older knife wound on his side. At least she wasn’t talking about fainting anymore. “Meditation helps.” He stepped out of the way. “Come in?”

Brushing past him, she headed down the hallway with light footsteps. He grabbed his first aid kit as he followed.

“You should sit,” she said softly.

He wet his lips and settled cross-legged on the floor in front of the couch.

“Really, Matt? The floor?”

Well, he wanted her to be comfortable. He gestured behind himself. “This might…take a while. You can have the couch.”

“So chivalrous,” she murmured, perching on the seat behind him and opening the kit. “You want, um, anything for the pain?”

He shook his head. “It would mess with my focus.”

“You _want_ to focus for this?” she asked incredulously.

“Yeah,” he said without further explanation. She was probably rolling her eyes, but then her fingers touched the middle of his back and his mouth went dry.

He’d been so naïve to expect this to be easy.

It wasn’t like he was a _stranger_ to receiving stitches from someone else. It started with Stick when he was a kid, and then there was Claire, and then there was Sister Maggie. But It turned out that Karen was very different.

To make things worse, he felt weirdly vulnerable sitting there with her behind him. His senses gave him full awareness in three hundred and sixty degrees around him, so he could track her equally well as if he were facing her. But he knew from experience that tracking someone didn’t help much if he couldn’t defend himself, and it was almost impossible to defend against an attack from behind without turning around.

Not that this was an attack.

He was being stupid.

This was _normal_. Almost.

He was right about one thing, though. Even without the meds, it took all his focus to keep his attention on the needle sliding with careful, painful slowness in and out of his skin instead of on her hands. He was thankful she’d been practicing (wasn’t entirely sure why she’d bothered) and he felt a bit guilty for wishing she’d practiced more so she’d be faster. If they kept sitting here in silence, he was gonna blurt out something he’d later wish he hadn’t.

“How’s the case going?” she asked suddenly, like she felt as awkward as he did.

He didn’t have to ask which one. They had a hearing coming up for Isaiah Pace, one of the first clients Matt and Foggy took on after reopening. He was twenty-three and holding down two minimum wage jobs to provide for his teenaged sister. No parents in the picture. A few months ago, a group of his buddies decided it would be smart to rob a series of gas stations. They hit five before they were caught. But the police didn’t only want credit for Isaiah’s friends; they wanted Isaiah, too.

Isaiah hadn’t been arrested at the scene because he hadn’t been at the scene at all, something Matt knew since he’d been watching over the situation as Daredevil. Not that he could admit that, which left the police to speculate that Isaiah _had_ been there. They thought he’d just taken off when he realized the cops were coming. After all, that was what Isaiah’s so-called friends said in their statements.

Besides, even if the prosecutor couldn’t nail Isaiah for the actual robberies, Isaiah was still being charged with conspiracy, with a sentence equally severe as if he’d been convicted of the robberies themselves. Isaiah insisted that he’d only agreed to the plan to get his friends off his back, and he’d backed out as soon as he got the chance. But raising the defense that Isaiah abandoned the conspiracy was easier said than done, since Matt had to prove not only that Isaiah didn’t contribute further to the robberies but also that Isaiah told his coconspirators that he was backing out.

Which Isaiah _did_. But only verbally, and none of his friends would admit to the truth.

“That bad, huh?” Karen asked bitterly.

Matt realized he hadn’t answered her. “Sorry. Just going over the facts in my head again.”

“I can’t believe they told the cops he was helping them.” She stabbed him a little harder than necessary. He could only hope taking her anger out on him meant she wouldn’t do something stupid later, like try to confront Isaiah’s friends.

Matt gritted his teeth against the pain. “Unless Isaiah’s friends actually take the stand, their statements are hearsay.”

“I thought statements by coconspirators is an exception to the hearsay rule?”

Huh. That was a pretty obscure exception. “Do you just spend your time researching hearsay these days?”

“Maybe,” she said slyly. “Actually, no. I was just looking into it for Isaiah’s case.”

“Well, good thinking. But nothing Isaiah’s friends say actually fit under that exception, since it only applies to statements made during the conspiracy.” He clenched his fist over the fabric of his pants as she tugged the thread a bit carelessly through his skin, like she was more interested in his explanation than in providing medical care. “Arrest ends a conspiracy, and they’d already been arrested by the time they blamed Isaiah.”

“Oh. Okay. One less thing to worry about, then.”

Her hair brushed his shoulder as she leaned closer. It was mildly distracting. “You’re…really invested in this.”

“Isaiah doesn’t deserve this,” she said flatly. She worked wordlessly for a few more seconds before adding: “I found something that might help. Not with the trial or anything, but…I was talking to Foggy. One of his cousins knows this guy who’s looking to hire someone to work at his shop. It’d pay more than both Isaiah’s jobs together.” She hissed when she got the angle of the needle wrong. “Sorry.”

“It’s fine. Is Isaiah qualified?”

“Um, not yet, but Foggy’s cousin says he just wants someone dedicated. I told him how hard Isaiah’s been working to take care of his sister, and now he wants an interview.”

“What, really? Karen, that’s…” Matt smiled since she couldn’t see his face at this angle. “That’s incredible. Have you told Isaiah?”

“I thought you or Foggy could tell him next time you see him.” She tied the thread off and cut away the excess, then pressed a bandage over the whole thing.

Matt took a risk and put his hand over hers, ostensibly to hold the bandage in place. “You made this happen. You should tell him.”

She left her hand under his. “I just want Isaiah to get the job, I don’t care about…about credit or—”

“I know you don’t.” It was one more thing to add to the list of things he loved about her. His smile was lingering way longer than it had any right to. “You know our job isn’t really to find other people jobs, right?”

“I don’t see why we shouldn’t,” she said hotly, pulling her hand away. “Isaiah has no one else to help him, so why shouldn’t we try?”

“No, I know. It’s just…” He wasn’t sure how to say how impressed he was without sounding like he was flirting.

Not that he was opposed to flirting.

Not that she was opposed to flirting. Maybe.

Still.

Her voice softened somewhat. “It’s just what, Matt?”

In keeping with his standard mode of operation, he ignored caution. Getting to his feet, he turned around to face her, nervously rubbing the fingers of his left hand together. “You’re such a good person, Karen, and I just…really appreciate that.”

A blush warmed her cheeks. She turned her head away to pack up the suturing kit. “It means a lot to hear you say that.”

Once, he would’ve thought she was saying that because she thought he was a particularly upstanding person. Now he knew better. She was saying that because she believed she wasn’t.

This was apparently a day for taking risks. He sat on the couch beside her. “It’s true. You always…you always think about how you can do more to help people, and…” _I love that about you. I love you._ “The world needs more of that.” He inclined his head towards her. “Don’t you think?”

She caught her breath.

One more risk. He reached for her hand and she let him take it.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These two are so cute and awkward.


	3. Stuff of Saints

Foggy

You know when a sentence just…won’t work? You stare at it for ages, to the point where all the words start to look fake, but you can’t figure out what’s wrong with it?

It was a stupid property case. Sweet, elderly Mrs. James was the mother of their client, and she wrote a will giving her property to her three children, but she apparently didn’t consult with a lawyer because the terms made zero sense. Now there was this huge fight among her kids over who should get her stuff. The opposing counsel had plenty of case law to back up their side, but Foggy was trying to argue that the trend in courts was to give more weight to people’s intent rather than fancy legal words. He was  _right_. It was just an exasperating mess.

Karen popped into his office. “Hey, Foggy?”

He groaned loudly now that he had an audience. “I’m a defense lawyer, right? Tell me again why I’m doing property stuff?”

“Because you want to help people?”

“Ugh. Whose idea was that?”

Her eyes sparkled. “Matt’s. Can I help?”

He pointed at the sentence. “Make this make sense.”

Coming around to his side of the desk, she studied his laptop screen, lips moving soundlessly for a moment. “You should split it into two sentences.”

He stared at the offending words, then at her, then back at his screen. “Huh.” He typed it out, then pushed his chair back. “Now I feel stupid.”

“If it helps, I don’t know what half the words in that sentence actually mean in this context.”

“Yeah, and that makes two of us.” He swiveled in his chair to face her. “So, what’s up?”

“Do you, um…” She slipped her hands nervously into the pockets of her dress. (She was really enthused that the dress had pockets and used them at every opportunity.) “Do you ever worry about Matt?”

“Do I ever _not_ worry about Matt is a better question.” He frowned. “Why, did something happen?”

“He kind of…passed out in his office the other day.”

“ _What?_ ”

“And you know that day when we both came in late? That was because I went over to stitch up this cut on his back so he could come in without bleeding through his shirts.”

Foggy’s brain was confused about whether it wanted to focus on the passing-out thing or the since-when-did-Karen-know-how-to-stitch thing, so it settled on blurting out something stupid: “I thought you were late because—um.”

She raised her eyebrows.

“Because there was really bad traffic,” he improvised.

“We’re not together. We tried that, remember?”

Yeah, back when they were both keeping about a thousand secrets. And Foggy wasn’t stupid—he saw how they responded to each other at work, how they seemed to gravitate around each other, how they lit up whenever the other one did the smallest little thing. But if Karen wanted to pretend otherwise, fine. She and Matt were adults. “You think something’s wrong with him?”

“No, I just…I wondered if you knew what happened to his armor.”

“The Halloween costume?”

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Armor.”

“No idea. I brought it up once, actually, and he just got super evasive. Treated me like I was some distant relative trying to force him to admit that he has a girlfriend and escaped as fast as possible.”

“Matt doesn’t have a girlfriend,” she said quickly. Too quickly.

Foggy just hummed in response.

“Um, anyway. I’ll talk to him.” She turned towards his door.

“Wait for a time when he’s incapacitated,” Foggy suggested. “So he can’t backflip away or something. And Karen!”

She glanced back. “Yeah?”

“Make sure he knows it’s…make sure he knows it’s because we care about him.”

She smiled softly. “Will do.”

 

Karen

Following Foggy's advice, she bit back questions about body armor for a full week. She worked with Matt and Foggy, brainstormed with Matt and Foggy, went out drinking with Matt and Foggy…and she didn’t spend any time alone with Matt at all. They were all too busy, and she had a sneaking suspicion that she’d freaked Foggy out by telling him about Matt fainting and now he wasn't letting Matt out of his sight.

But then Matt called her—not Foggy—to say between short gasps for breath that he’d been cut pretty bad and wasn’t sure he’d make it in to work even with stitches, but would she please help anyway?

“It’s unlocked,” he called when she stopped outside his door, and sure enough it swung open at her touch. Her unease increased. Toeing her shoes off, she padded down the hall to find him curled on his couch, pressing thick gauze to his torso.

Her eyes widened. “What happened?”

He raised his head a little, still breathing sharply. “Um. There were like twelve of them.” 

Grabbing his first aid kit, she dragged a chair with her as she approached the couch. “Did you get them?”

“Yeah. Left them unconscious in an alley, called the cops.” He flashed her a tight smile. “The usual.”

Carefully, she started to pull the gauze back, and quickly realized that this particular injury was very much not usual. It was like someone had sliced from his chest to his stomach, leaving lots of blood and even—yikes—a flap of skin in its wake. She swallowed.

“Hey.” His hand found her wrist so he could run his thumb over her skin. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to.”

“Seriously?” He was cut into stripes and he was worried about what _she_ could handle? “Just…lie back a little like that. Oh, ew…” Blood was trickling over his skin as he shifted.

“I can do it,” he said quickly, though he made no move to take any of the supplies from her.

Gritting her teeth, she sterilized the wound, trying to ignore the way his muscles stood out in stark relief. “Why’d you call me, then?”

One of his hands gripped the fabric of his pants in a tight fist. “Maybe I just wanted to listen to the sound of your voice while you stitched me up?”

She began threading the needle through his skin. “Or maybe you knew that if you did it yourself, you’d tear everything out by this time tomorrow.”

“That, too,” he admitted in a pained exhale.

She wanted to stab him with the needle, or at the very least berate him with questions about why he couldn’t just take care of himself for twenty-four hours. Stifling her frustration, she concentrated on making perfect stitches until she felt relatively calmer. Then she peeked at his face to see him wincing. Because of the pain, or because he’d somehow picked up on her emotions? Did he have any idea how much trouble he was in?

But she kept her voice even when she spoke. “You used to have body armor, right?”

“It got destroyed. When Midland Circle collapsed.” He was breathing deeply through his nose now, in and out, as she worked.

“But you survived.”

“Well, I was pretty banged up too.” He must've sensed her irritation, because he hastily went on: “It was a pretty incriminating thing to leave lying around a Catholic orphanage. I think…I think the nuns just got rid of it.”

“They didn’t talk to you about it?”

After a moment, he shook his head.

Interesting. “So you haven’t found a way to get a new one?”

“My tailor kind of got arrested.”

“You’re a _defense_ lawyer.”

“He aided and abetted Poindexter,” Matt shot back. “The best lawyer in the world could only do so much.”

“Okay, okay.” She let silence fall between them, let his eyes slip closed, let him relax a little. “So, the guy who made your suit…you think he’s a criminal?”

Matt kept his eyes closed. “He has a pretty strong duress case, actually. Fisk was threatening someone he cared about. And given all of Fisk’s resources, I be a jury would believe that no reasonable person could’ve resisted the threat. The only thing that’s really up for debate is whether he negligently put himself in that position to begin with, but he could at least raise duress as a legal excuse.”

“You’ve given this some thought,” she murmured.

He shrugged, then gritted his teeth like he regretted the movement. “He got arrested because I left him behind.”

“And because he was being a criminal.”

A ghost of a smile flickered across his face. “You didn’t leave Frank Castle behind.”

Oh, he was going _there._ “I thought you said he deserved judgment.”

“Well, yeah. Judgment is important. But so is mercy.” The smile became lopsided, something more sincere. His eyes opened. “It’s a good trait, Karen. The stuff of saints.”

She chewed on her lip, bracing herself. “Is it really mercy if the reason I didn’t judge him is just because I wouldn’t want to be judged the same way?”

“Actually—” He clenched his jaw as the thread tugged at his skin. “Actually, I’d say that just means you’re being honest.”

She glared at his wound. “I didn’t tell you or Foggy about Wesley until the FBI threatened to drag it out into the open. That’s not exactly honest.”

He didn’t answer immediately. When she glanced over at him, she saw his sightless eyes directed towards the ceiling. “I don’t deserve the suit anymore. To answer your question about why I, uh, don’t just get another one.”

She sat back in the chair, leaving half his wound un-stitched. “What does that even mean?”

More blood trickled over his body when he squirmed a little on the couch. “The—the suit was supposed to be a symbol. A warning. To, you know…the wicked. And it just seems hypocritical for me to wear that now. To enact judgment against others that I couldn’t stand against myself.”

Oh, Matt. She reached out to run her hand up his cheek. “You really think that?”

“I hurt you.” His sightless eyes flicked over her face. “And Foggy, and my mom. The things I did, the secrets I kept. I hurt everyone that I…that I care about.”

“Well,” she said softly, “I can’t speak to Foggy or your mom, but you know I’ve forgiven you for that, don’t you?”

He just pressed his lips together and gave the tiniest possible shake of his head.

“I’m not saying it’s _easy_. But it’s my choice to forgive you, again and again if I have to, regardless of whether you think you deserve it.” She wasn’t sure if that was really what Catholics believed, but it was what _she_ believed.

Without his glasses, it sometimes felt like she could read his emotions in his eyes as well as he could read hers in her heartbeat. Right now, he looked almost…adoring. “Like I said,” he whispered. “Stuff of saints.”

It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he should look at her like that and not believe that he was equally loved. “Mercy’s only one side of the coin. What about justice?”

“What about it?”

“What about defending the innocent? Shouldn’t saints be doing those things, too?” He looked confused now, like that couldn’t possibly apply to him. “Hey, listen. You’re helping people every day and every night.” Before she could second guess herself, she took his hand and held it against her heart. “And...and I think you’re good.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I think you’re kind of amazing, actually.”

He opened his mouth. Probably to protest. So she put her finger on his lips.

Which was apparently all the motivation he needed to draw himself up to a sitting position. Before she could yell at him for jeopardizing all her hard work, he placed his hand along her jaw, stroking his thumb over her cheek. Then his head tilted downward ever so slightly and her heart beat wildly in anticipation. She wasn't sure which of them closed the distance first. Her eyes closed as their lips met and memories gave way to the future.

Suddenly, he pulled back with a grimace. "I ruined your shirt.”

Glancing down, she saw streaks of blood across her blouse that she already knew wouldn't be coming out any time soon.

“I’m so sorry,” he was stammering. “I shouldn’t have—”

She laughed and he shut up. “Matt.” Leaning closer, she wound her fingers through his hair. “Believe me when I say that you are completely, utterly worth it.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I realize this chapter is super late. In my defense, these two characters are just the worst at getting anything done. (I love them so much.)

**Author's Note:**

> I have a whole list of tumblr prompts that I promise I'll get to. Come squeal with me at: https://www.tumblr.com/blog/ceterisparibus116


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